Man, I miss the internet. I could go for a multi-day video binge right now.

The door-thingy had sucked me into an infinite blackness. Too back for you little door, I have practice! This new paradigm really likes infinite blacknesses, why not shake it up a bit? Infinite rainbow space, infinite cloudland, finite box room with smaller box rooms inside the smaller boxes. It's just a thought; because I'm STILL FUCKING FLOATING IN DARKNESS WITH NOTHING TO DO!

And like always, my mental outburst triggered the cutscene. I was dropped off into a medium-sized laboratory. It looked like a haphazard mess, just like a physics department research lab. It was utter chaos. Seeing MAYBE valuable stuff being thrown on the floor hurt me.

It took a good twenty minutes for me to power-organize the room. It's a fun little game I do where I disregard effort and organize things while running around at top speed. I get a BIT sweaty, but why did that matter?

The room was now organized, everything in places I think the stuff maybe sorta kinda fit. Some of the equipment I had never seen before, well, most of it. The only familiar stuff was a scale balance, a thermometer, a box of what looked like matches, and a bucket.

There was a weird-looking metal bowel the size of a large pot. It had carvings on the side of it, dense images that covered every bit of space on its surface. They weren't depicting anything; mostly just swirly clouds and strange words I couldn't read.

The room lacked any windows, making it feel more like a prison cell than a laboratory. The walls were dark grey and made from stone. I praised the Almighty Turtle that I had finally found grey stone; even though I was in some weird door.

I come across something strange when cleaning the room. It was a little cube of metal. The small object was incredibly heavy, many times more dense than a block of Osmium. I actually had a hard time picking it up. With it being 10 cm on every side, as well as perfectly smooth, the simple act of grabbing it was difficult.

I WILL pick you up.

I really wanted to put it in my pocket once I had achieved successful lifting, but I was afraid it would go right through my pants. Instead, I put it right on the corner of the table so I could pick it up easier the next time. What I wasn't expecting was that it tilted the table and made it fall on its side.

You dense motherfucker.

I had just organized that table, so after some quick curses and a sweaty minute later, it was fixed.

Onto the interesting pile.

Other than tools, I found some books. I had to calm down my excitement. Books were a guilty pleasure of mine, not the information inside, that was what the internet was for, but the physical book. The smell of the paper, the craftsmanship of the spine, the texture of the cover. It was all heavenly.

While looking through the book, admiring the stitching, I came across scribbles I could read.

{Diary of &&&&&&. Beginning with the history of myself...}

"NOPE!"

I yeeted the book across the room into a bucket. It made a satisfying thunk and I grabbed the matches, liting the book on fire. It had been tainted by history, thrown off the cliff of perfection and into the pit of taint. It pained my heart to watch such an excellently crafted book be destroyed, but it was necessary; for the greater good.

In this old-timey world, such a book must have been exceedingly rare and probably expensive. Most importantly, hand-made. That was the best way to make books. Machines were cold and hard, slaving away for their human masters. Machine-made books were made to be filled with useless information. Hand-made books, those were to be filled by the creator; only with the most useful information.

The maker of this book had mixed the evil into the good, ruining the whole thing. I watched the book burn, the flame reflecting in my eyes. Destruction was natural, chaos was natural; order was insanity, and insanity was bad.

I, a perfectly sane individual, reached my hand into the flaming bucket. I wanted to pull out the cover; it could be reused since it was made primarily from some kind of metallic cardboard. The fire hurt, but my hand magically healed again. Still strange.

Oh helllllll nah!

Immediately after the cover left the flaming bucket, the fire instantly went out. Once exhausted, the ashes flung themselves out of the receptacle and assembled themselves into pages again in the book. It was like watching real-life CGI. The blackened ash regained a smooth yellow page texture and the words re-wrote themselves onto the pages.

I now held onto a clearly witchcraft-infested book. This made the content even less interesting and the book itself super-duper-ultra interesting. Whoever made such a book was now my hero, outside of the blasphemous information they had scribed upon its righteous pages.

I put the book inside my shirt, for later, and kept checking the room. Everything else was too big or way too heavy to be stolen. Already my shirt bulged from just one book, imagine if I tried to take that metal cauldron out. Crazy.

Rooms were meant to be exited, hopefully. I saw nothing even closely resembling a door. My hunt for an exit was halted when I found a big, round, red button. It had a glass cover over it, yellow marking around it, and what looked to be a warning.

Its red body shone with a light, a soft light that was firm with resolve. This button was important. This button was dangerous. This button was not to be messed with.

I pressed the fuck out of that button. I played cookie clicker with that button. I... broke the button. But I didn't fret! The button fixed itself just like the book had; so I pressed it some more. I was in heaven, the button gave such a satisfying click after each and every pressing.

Then the whole room fucking exploded and I was warped out of it instantly. I was once again left in the infinite black darkness inside this strange door, in a ravine, on land, on an alien planet... and so on. What felt like a dozen minutes later, I was brought back into the room. It was just as I had left it.

*Gasp* Dust particle 4354463 is out of place! Who messed with my dust!

After my dumbass joke to myself, I walked back over to the button and pressed it once. It pained me to do so, but it was the only thing in the room that seemed to not be strictly equipment or information. I already fulfilled my eternal duty of pressing red buttons regardless of warnings.

To my surprise, I was brought to a new room. I guess it was the escape button, the kind that you pressed to indicate the room was about to explode and GTFO. The new room consisted entirely of a coliseum. The ceiling was obviously flat, but projected some nice-looking, though repetitive clouds on it.

Tacky.

Standing in the center was an old man. He sat cross-legged and floated a meter off the ground. Brown robes covered his entire body along with a hood that concealed his face. How was he an old man? Simple, the hands were as wrinkly as a three-hour bath.

Why are all the masters old men with magical powers? Can't I get some mystical turtle? I just want my fucking turtles already!

I had appeared at the edge of the arena, 50 meters from the center where the man floated. I was going to ask nicely where the exit was before kindly thanking him.

I wasn't able to get a word out since he spoke; the voice was fairly neutral, "You being here means that serpent finally sensed something. The world is in trouble. We have long hidden ourselves from disaster..."

"I'm gonna stop you right there you wrinkly codger," I interjected, "I was just looking for the exit. If you could point me in its direction, I would be grateful."

The hooded man pulled back the hood; revealing a woman. Oops. Still didn't care.

"I'm gonna stop you right there you wrinkly old..."

Her angry voice resounded through the space between us, "If you finish that sentence, I swear I will torture you with electrocution until you go into a coma."

I shrugged my shoulders. Electricity? I swallowed a 9-volt battery to find out if I could feel the tingling in my stomach. That was a very weird dump, along with the poisoning from the breakdown of the battery. Fork in the toaster. Two hands on an alternator. Muscle stimulators on max *hah* voltage. I was best friends with electricity, though it didn't know that yet.

"Look LADY, I have a turtle and a subordinate on the outside, one of which is dying from dust pneumonia."

She waved her hand in response, "There, your friends are cured. Now, you will sit down and listen to me. I have VERY IMPORTANT things to tell you about. You are the hero that will save us all..."

I had it up to *HERE* with exposition. I was thankful she claimed to have cured Jane from here, but people problems lead to more people problems. More people problems lead to a cascade of people problems. The list never ends. Turtles eat leaves and laze about; my kinda people.

"I don't care. I just want to go be with the turtles. The world's problems are not mine to fix, pick someone else."

The lady looks like a balloon about to pop. I guess I was a tad bit rude... Nah. Just let me out of here old lady!

I didn't expect her next moves. I wished Mr. Axe was with me, I'd cave her head in no problemo. She made a grasping motion in the air and a stone hand jumped out of the ground. I tried my very best to dodge roll to the side. Anyone who has actual combat experience knows that dodge-rolling is not a viable strategy; I was not one of said people. Dodge rolling was cool as fuck and I would scream that to the world.

Mid-roll, she had grabbed me with the hand made of stone and brought her face millimeters from mine. It was disgusting! Faces were not meant to be seen that close! Every pore was on display, yuck.

"You listen to me you little shit. YOU! YOU alone were chosen. That means the serpent managed to grasp an extremely rare vision of the future, a vision where YOU are the one to save the planet. I am the teacher that will get you up to the standard of doing so. And you aren't leaving until you are ready!"

During her little outburst, all I could think about was the philosophical implications of actual future sight. What did that mean for free will? How much of it was BS? Would it know what ice cream turtles need? All vital questions for intense debate among long-beared guys in togas. It was that last part of her speech that irked me.

I can't leave? Are you sure about that? I will actively sabotage this planet should my turtle-positive demands not be met. I will walk over the decaying corpses of billions, blood running thicker than a river. The soil with become barren and the sky will be filled with poison. I have no qualms with ruining an entire planet if I am kept from my turtles.

I calmly looked into her eyes. Magic? Weak. Old people? Killable. Magic old people? Harder to kill, but doable. I wouldn't let her prevent my plans, so I spat in her face and said my peace.

"I WILL NOT become this planet's so-called HERO. In fact! I will kill myself right now if I am not allowed to continue on my journey to the turtle-filled landscapes of the Badlands."

The woman wiped my spit from her face. It was still a bit gritty and dense from all the dust and dehydration, so it made a great STICKING point. *Ba-dum crash!* I swear I haven't seen a tomato even attempt to compete with her shade of red. Real anger problems with this one. I guess age hadn't brought her wisdom.

Her face regained composure. She did that quite often, going calm and then angry again and then calm. She then uttered the 6 words last words of parents in an argument, "I'd like to see you try."

Bet. I turned off my heart.

She didn't take it seriously at first, just watching me with curiosity. She even looked a bit amused by my inaction, clearly thinking that I was not doing anything. Laugh it up now raging granny, it won't be so funny in 3 minutes when I'm braindead.

The funny thing about nervous system injuries, sometimes they leave you with superpowers. A bad ski trip left me with a partially torn T-1 spinal cord injury and the ability to shut off my heart at will. It took me a few weeks to learn, but I got it down pat. The easiest way to get out of classes; just have a heart attack.

Once my face turned purple, the woman started to anger-panic. Blaming me and yelling at me to stop. Why would I? This was negotiations; I sensed a distinct lack of electricity coursing through me from her earlier threats, so I already knew they were empty. I would not leave my position so unsupported like that. Follow-through is key.

Once consciousness was starting to get fuzzy, I heard the woman start screaming, "OK! OK! You can go to the Bardland or whatever! Please don't die!"

Heart, you better start working again or I'll kill you, and Mr. Brain!

My heart started right back up again. I had won my victory. The rights of turtle seeking had been secured. Vision returned and danger was averted. The woman breathed a sigh of relief; I hadn't died. I didn't care for her reason, all I wanted was turtles.

I wasn't actually gonna fully kill myself, that is stupid. Who else would love those wild turtles instead of me!

And Mom said I'm bad at compromise.